Development of a national licence assessment program for older drivers in Australia.

Licensing requirements in Australasia vary across jurisdictions with little evidence of any safety benefit for any existing procedure. In 1998, Austroads (a collaboration of State Traffic Authorities in Australia and New Zealand) commissioned the Monash University Accident Research Centre to develop and trial a model licence re-assessment program for older drivers in Australasia. The procedure was developed in 1999 and involved input from a number of key experts in Australia and New Zealand. A pilot study was undertaken in Tasmania early in 2000 to evaluate the procedural aspects of the model. A study of four off-road screening tests also commenced in 2001 to validate these instruments against a range of driving performance measures. This paper reports preliminary findings from these studies.